Little Green Footballs

Wednesday, January 26, 2005

OK, that headline was a gratuitous overstatement. After all, the only thing that Charles Johnson and Hitler have in common are their genocidal demagogery and the inexplicable appeal of a pasty old white man with questionable hair to hordes of mindless minions. But there is a point to the headline. You see, Charles Johnson has a way of distorting reality to suit his ends, and nowhere is this better seen than in his daily ranting against the 'left-liberal media elite'. Case in point: Ted Turner. Reporting on a speech at the National Association for Television Programming Executives' conference, Turner was part-quoted by Broadcasting and Cable thus:

"While Fox may be the largest news network [and has overtaken Turner’s CNN], it’s not the best, Turner said. He followed up by pointing out that Adolph Hitler got the most votes when he was elected to run Germany prior to WWII. He said the network is the propaganda tool for the Bush Administration. “There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s certainly legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy. Particularly when the news is dumbed down,” leaving voters without critical information on politics and world events and overloaded with fluff,“ he said."

Note that Turner did not say Fox News was Hitler. Nor did he say that it acted like Hitler. No, he said that the most popular is not always the best, and gave as an example the 'democratic' rise to office of the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler.